The silver empress of the night appears
(Canto II, 31)
and “daisie-whitened plain,” “crystal-streamed Esk” are among his new formations in “Eskdale Braes.”
James Beattie has a large number of compounds in his poems, and though many of these are mechanical formations, he has a few new “nature” epithets which are real additions to the vocabulary of poetical description, as “sky-mixed mountain” (“Ode to Peace,” 38), the lake “dim-gleaming” (“Minstrel,” 176), “the wide-weltering waves” (ibid., 481), the wave “loose-glimmering” (“Judgment of Paris,” 458). He has also a few instances of Type VII chiefly utilized, as often with compounds of this type, as personifying epithets: “the frolic moments purple-pinioned” (“Judgment of Paris,” 465) and “loose-robed Quiet” (“Triumph of Melancholy,” 64).
The “Pleasures of Memory” (1792) by Samuel Rogers has one or two compound formations: “moonlight-chequered shade” (Part II). Hope’s “summer-visions” (ibid.) and “the fairy-haunts of long-lost hours” (ibid.), have a trace at least of that suggestive power with which Keats and Shelley were soon to endow their epithets. Brief reference only need be made to the works of Erasmus Darwin, which have already been mentioned as the great example of eighteenth century stock diction used to the utmost possible extent. He has plenty of instances of compound epithets of every type, but his favourite formation appears to be that of a noun plus part-participle, as “sun-illumined fane” (“Botanic Garden,” I, 157), “wave-worn channels” (ibid., I, 362), and as seen in such lines as
Her shell-wrack gardens and her sea-fan bowers.
(“Economy of Vegetation,” VI, 82)
Many of Darwin’s compounds have a certain charm of their own; in the mass they contribute towards that dazzling splendour with which eighteenth century diction here blazed out before it finally disappeared.
Cowper, like Blake and Crabbe, is not especially distinguished for his compound epithets. Though he has a large number of such formations, very few of them are either new or striking, a remark which applies equally to his original work and his translations. Many instances of all the types are to be found in the “Homer,” but scarcely one that calls for special mention, though here and there we come across good epithets well applied: “accents ardour-winged” (IV, 239) or “silver-eddied Peneus” (II, 294).
Before attempting to sum up the use of compound epithets in eighteenth century poetry, brief reference may be made to their use in the early work of the two poets who announced the definite advent of the new age. Wordsworth in his early poems has many instance of compound words, most of which are either his own formations, or are rare before his time. The original and final drafts both of the “Evening Walk” and the “Descriptive Sketches” show some divergence in this respect, compounds found in the 1793 version being omitted later, whilst on the other new formations appear in the revised poems. Besides imitative instances such as “cloud-piercing pine trees” (D.S., 63), there are more original and beautiful compounds, such as the “Lip-dewing song and the ringlet-tossing dance” (ibid., 132), which does not appear until the final draft.